In Sickness and in Health
by FallenPride
Summary: The first time Sheppard got sick he spent the first hellish morning trying to keep his eyes open.


**Rating:** PG (for language)  
**Warnings:** Nonthing that I can really think of at the moment  
**Notes:** I wrote this for bluejbird (LJ) when she was feeling under the weather. There is only a very slightly implied John/Rodney slant to this little story, but it is very easily over looked. Hope you enjoy it!

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The first time Sheppard got sick he spent the first hellish morning trying to keep his eyes open. He spent the next day in his office filling out paperless forms that were quickly becoming the bane of his existence. He drank the Athosian tea they had imported from the mainland with heavy amounts of some kind of tree sap that was almost exactly like honey except it was blue. Halfway through that cold, he used the last of the toilet paper for Kleenex and coughed at anyone who gave him a dirty look for the poor substitute they had traded for.

The second time he got a cold was worse. So much worse. He was almost convinced that his nose had managed to escape from its rightful place on his face and that his lungs were attempting to stage their own escape by breaking his ribs. Ford gave him movies to watch (standing just outside the door and sliding them along the floor). Rodney kept him entertained when Carson locked him in his room with games of chess (he'd wear a face mask and latex gloves each time which prompted many comments along the lines of: _I don't have cooties, Rodney_). Teyla brought him more tea and stayed to sit with him some afternoons when he was too tired to do more than flop down on a relatively horizontal surface and never move again.

The third time he got a mix between airsick and seasick on the return trip on the Daedalus. For the first four days of the trip back, he'd clung to a metal bowl trying to impersonate the Porcelain God. Rodney had sat on the floor of the bathroom with him, rubbing useless circles into his back with one hand while muttering a cursing at his laptop and typing furiously with the other. Elizabeth even went to see him a few times, but her bedside manner sucked so much that she'd eventually given up trying to make him feel better and just tried to make him still feel useful by going over some reports with him.

He got the flu the fourth time and spent the entire feverish week shivering while drilling the new batch of personnel. He'd gotten a temperature of a 102, flushed, and warmly dressed (a long sleeved black turtle neck, with his coat on and zipped all the way up) and had scared some of the new marines to the point many of them requested transfers. Ronon got him some sort of herb for the fever, Teyla brought him more tea and even cooked him some soup (which hadn't stayed down, though he had blamed it on nausea he was pretty sure Teyla knew he had been lying). Rodney brought him movies and books to read. While Elizabeth bypassed sympathy and sent him the paper work (she'd gotten her own case of the flu from him). But Lorne was the one who came by to see him, doing his own paper work in Sheppard's room while sharing some of the freshest gossip.

The fifth time he got sick, he thanked ever single malicious microbe and bacteria he'd come in contact with. Because there was no way he could have lived with himself if he'd simpered and fawned like the rest of the city had. At least he'd only fallen pry to the planet when Rodney had taken it. (Which wasn't all that much better, but at least Rodney didn't take advantage of his altered state – well no more advantage than he normally did anyway).

This was the sixth time he'd gotten sick. And it was just his luck that of everything he could have caught here in Pegasus he'd gotten the Pegasus version of Chicken Pox. The blisters had a faintly purple tint to them, and were more itchy than he remember Earth Chicken Pox being. He'd been quarantined in the infirmary and slathered with some sort of paste made from a plant root that Teyla had gone trading for.

Glancing about the room, he smiled. Ronon, Rodney, Teyla, Elizabeth, and Lorne were all wriggling around in their beds trying not to scratch while their skin crawled and begged for the relief of rasping nails. At least this time he had company who was just as miserable as he was.


End file.
